Logos representative only and should not be seen as an endorsement / preference / recommendation
Updates from the week through to Sunday, March 12th, 2023
This summary is generally published every Monday, and is a list of SL viewer / client releases (official and TPV) made during the previous week. When reading it, please note:
It is based on my Current Viewer Releases Page, a list of all Second Life viewers and clients that are in popular use (and of which I am aware), and which are recognised as adhering to the TPV Policy. This page includes comprehensive links to download pages, blog notes, release notes, etc., as well as links to any / all reviews of specific viewers / clients made within this blog.
By its nature, this summary presented here will always be in arrears, please refer to the Current Viewer Release Page for more up-to-date information.
Note that for purposes of length, TPV test viewers, preview / beta viewers / nightly builds are generally not recorded in these summaries.
Official LL Viewers
Release viewer: Maintenance Q(uality) viewer, version 6.6.9.577968, promoted Thursday, February 2, 2023- no change.
Release channel cohorts:
No updates.
Project viewers:
glTF / PBR Materials project viewer, version 7.0.0.578613, March 10 – This viewer will only function on the following Aditi (beta grid) regions: Materials1; Materials Adult and Rumpus Room 1 through 4.
A Northrop Grumman Cygnus resupply vehicle approaches the International Space Station (ISS) to deliver supplies. Credit: NASA
ISS Updates
In a further sign that the International Space Station is in its final decade of operations, NASA is seeking to extend the current contracts for re-supply missions to the station from the period January 2027 through December 2030, in what is referred to as a “final” contract period.
In March 2022, NASA awarded additional contracts for ISS re-supply missions through until the end of 2026 to SpaceX (Cargo Dragon) Northrop Grumman (Cygnus) and Sierra Space (Dream Chaser Cargo). Under the extension, all three companies will be allowed to bid on remaining re-supply mission slots through until December 2030, but contract opportunities will not be issued to additional companies beyond these three.
Under the current contract, SpaceX are required to fly a total of 15 resupply missions through until the end of 2026, at an average of US $157 million per flight; Northrop Grumman 14 Cygnus flights at an average of US $150 million; and Sierra Space three Dream Chaser Cargo flights at US $367 apiece. It is not clear if any additional flights granted between January 2027 and December 2030 will be at the current rates or whether the three companies will seek to raise their fees – with the 2018 contract extension, SpaceX hiked their fees by 50%.
SNC’s uncrewed Dream Chaser Cargo and its external cargo module, which will also supply electrical power to the vehicle. Credit: Sierra Space.
No further re-supply missions to ISS to be scheduled beyond 2030, that is the year the station is to be decommissioned and the majority of it de-orbited to burn up in the atmosphere, with any surviving elements crashing into the Pacific Ocean at Point Nemo – the area of that ocean furthest of land in any direction. However, modules due to be delivered to the ISS by Axiom Space starting in 2025 will be detached to form the nucleus of a new private-sector space station.
Currently, it is not clear whether Russia plans to remain with the ISS programme through until 2030 or withdraw some time before. In 2022, the country announced plans to withdraw “after 2024” (which many pundits took to mean “from 2025”) in order to focus on a national space station – the Russian Orbital Service Station. The power module for this new station had originally been slated for 2024, with the core module targeting 2025. However, the power module will now not launch before 2027, and the core module “no earlier” than 2028, so it would seem likely Russia will remain engaged in ISS operations through until at least then.
A model of the Russian Orbital Service Station during the Russian Federation’s International Military-Technical Forum “Army”, August 2022, complete with Soyuz replacement crew vehicle (foreground). Credit: Kirill Borisenko
In the interim, there was a degree of excitement aboard the ISS in the past week. At 12:42 UTC on Monday, March 6th, 2023, the ISS has to use the thrusters on the Progress M-22 re-supply vehicle currently docked at the station’s Zvezda module to avoid a potential collision with an orbiting satellite.
The satellite in question – believed to be Nusat-17, part of an Argentinean earth observation constellation, the majority of which were launched in the 2020s, and all ten satellites in the network are in orbits deteriorating towards that of the ISS. The potential for collision was known in advance, allowing the orbital boost – called a pre-determined avoidance manoeuvre (PDAM) – to be completed with the minimum of fuss, the Progress firing its thrusters for 6 minutes and without disruption to overall ISS operations.
The manoeuvre marked the 33rd such change to the station’s orbital track resulting from the risk of collision since 1999, and there is mounting concern that the greater use of low-altitude constellations of satellites such as those operated by SpaceX Starlink and the UK’s OneWeb could see the ISS facing greater exposure to potential collisions over the next 7-8 years.
A graph showing the numbers of ISS collision avoidance manoeuvres between 1999 and 2023. Credit: NASA Orbital Debris Program Office (ODPO)
The distraction of the manoeuvre was not enough to delay preparations for the return of NASA’s Crew 5 mission from the ISS aboard SpaceX Crew Dragon Endurance, with the vehicle departing the ISS on Saturday, March 11th, 2023 at 0720 UTC. Aboard were NASA astronauts Josh Cassada and Nicole Mann, together the Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata and cosmonaut Anna Kikina of Russia, returning home after 157 days on-orbit aboard the ISS, and having completed a hand-over to the personnel of Crew 6, who arrived at the ISS on March 3rd.
After undocking, Endurance performed a series of orbital manoeuvres throughout the day, prior to completing re-entry to splashdown off the Florida coast at 02:02 UTC on Sunday, March 12th, bringing to an end a mission marked by firsts: Mann being the first Native American to reach orbit; Kikina the first Russian national to fly on a private US space vehicle, and Wakata setting the record for the longest cumulative time a Japanese astronaut has spent in space thus far – 505 days in total. He is also the only Japanese astronaut to fly into space in three different space craft: the US space shuttle (4 times), Soyuz (once) and Crew Dragon (once).
The Crew 5 team, clockwise from bottom: Koichi Wakata, Anna Kikina, Josh Cassada and Nicole Mann. Credit: NASA
The Russian space agency Roscosmos is turning its eyes to the that the recent coolant leaks which left the crew of Soyuz MS-22 without a ride back to Earth and also affected Progress MS-21 towards a manufacturing fault.
Russian mission managers initially blamed a micrometeoroid strike on the leak which crippled Soyuz MS-22 on December 14th, 2022. However, when the Progress vehicle (referred to as Progress 82 by NASA) suffered a similar, but lesser rupture in its coolant loop, questions started to be asked as to whether something else was to blame – the Soyuz and Progress vehicles are essentially the same vehicles using the same systems, with the exception that Progress had none of the crew facilities or life support systems, instead being equipped for carrying cargo; they are also without any heat shield, so the entire vehicle burns-up on re-entering the atmosphere.
With Progress MS-21, Roscosmos stated the leak, which occurred in February, was the result of a launch incident five months before the vehicle docked with the ISS. However, Roscosmos has now joined with Soyuz / Progress manufacturer Energia to investigate a possible manufacturing issue affecting both vehicles – particularly given the failures occurred after both craft had been in space for roughly the same amount of time, suggesting some form of related failure.
Progress data. Credit: Karl Tate
As I noted in my previous Space Sunday update, Soyuz MS-22 has been replaced at the International Space Station (ISS) by MS-23, which is intended to provide the crew of Frank Rubio (NASA) and cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitry Petelin with a ride home in September 2023. However, NASA in particular is monitoring it and Progress MS-22 (launched in February 2023) for any signs of problems as the vehicles remain at the station.
Blade Runner Future Noir, March 2023 – click any image for full size
Hera (zee9) is back with a further take on Scott’s Blade Runner, and the director’s transplanted dystopian ideas from Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. It’s not the first time Hera has tackled the theme in a build – as I’ve covered several times in these pages – either indirectly through her Drune builds or more directly through her February 2022 Blade Runner build, which I wrote about here.
With Blade Runner Future Noir, Hera has taken the opportunity presented by a Full private region leveraging the Land Capacity bonus to greatly expand on her February 2022 vision, offering offering something which is partially familiar to visitors of that build and something which is new an unique. Combined, these elements serve to deliver one of the most immersive and integrated representations of Scott’s filmic vision to be presented in Second Life.
Blade Runner Future Noir, March 2023
I say “integrated” here, because Blade Runner Future Noir brings together Hera’s stunning visuals, an superb ambient sound scape and a curated music stream which perfectly reflects the the setting, offering as it does pieces from the soundtracks of both films, plus pieces from other suitable sources. As such, this is very much a setting which should be visited with both local sounds on and the audio stream enabled.
This is something very special for me. It is without doubt the best Cyberpunk sim I have created. It has all the elements that the others did not have or could not have due to space and prim limits. Blade Runner, for those who know and love it, needs no introduction.
– Hera (Zee9)
Blade Runner Future Noir, March 2023
From the landing point – do be sure to tat the information note card that’s available there – visitors are delivered to a subway train car, the platform beyond it offering the way up to street level and the hustle and dampness of downtown and old town Los Angeles. The street scenes here are perhaps the most familiar aspects of the design for those who have visited the February 2022 build. Familiar, but not necessarily the same; there is a wealth of details waiting to be found that was not present on that build which could not be previously included.
That detail come s both large and small: from the vehicles through to the Animesh NPCs to the posters which there familiar touches of humour – some of which are the work of AmandaBennet1967 – and signage found among the streets and buildings. The NPCs are a first for Hera’s builds, again thanks for the increased Land Capacity presented by the region. They offer a sense of life which goes beyond static NPC figures – although admittedly, seeing an LAPD officer in full amour and casually swinging what appears to be a large, automatic projectile weapon while bouncing and hopping on the balls of his feet did after me crossing the street to avoid the risk of an accidental *bang* and ricochet 🙂 .
Blade Runner Future Noir, March 2023
There is a great deal of familiar stuff here, but it has all been re arranged and expanded upon. There is also a great deal of new stuff, all of which you will have to find, it’s been such a long time since I put some of it in that I have forgotten where things are myself … The devil is in the detail and I have at last had a chance, and the prims , to just go way over the top. There are so many small things scattered about here now, and I could have continued had I not begun to get dangerously close, in a 30000 prim sim, of running out.
– Hera (Zee9)
As with the February 2022 build, it is possible to visit The Snake Pit – although Zhora is not present, and the club is a little more up-market compared to the establishment at which she performed. Similarly, the Tyrell Tower looms over the setting, bearing the name of its founder / owner. Within it can be found Tyrell’s office and conference area where visitors might appreciate an owl and just down the hallway can be found Tyrell’s bedchamber. Also awaiting visitors is the office level where Holden met his violent end after confusing / upsetting Leon whilst administering the Voight-Kampff test. Further within the tower is more to be found – but I’ll little your discover what that might be.
Blade Runner Future Noir, March 2023
New to this build is the means by which one might choose the reach the tower. Whilst the route at street level remains, those finding their way to the roof of the LAPD headquarters can use the rezzer on one of the landing pads there to call-up a police spinner and treat themselves to a Deckard-style flight to Tyrell Tower as it faces the police building across the width of the region.
Dow at ground level are some familiar and not-so-familiar locations to be visited. The Snake Pit still awaits patrons, for example – although it is again perhaps a little more up-market in looks and tone to the club which employed Joanna Cassidy’s Zhora. For those who prefer, street level offers access to the local club (just be wary of the soda beverage available in the foyer – at least, if it’s name is to be taken literally! is numerous smaller locations I don’t recall from previous builds.
Blade Runner Future Noir, March 2023
As well as Blade Runner, the setting apparently draws on influences from the game Cyberpunk 2077, including the apartment belonging to the game’s protagonist, V. I confess it’s not a game I’m familiar with at all, so I have no idea if the apartment I found was inspired by V’s; but I will say that for some odd reason put me in mind of the Hume’s apartment from the (sadly) short-lived series Total Recall 2070 (which, despite its title owed as much to Scott’s vision of Los Angeles as it did to Dick’s novella We Can Remember It for You Wholesale), even if the similarities are at best superficial.
Another apartment available to visitors is at of J. F. Sebastian, tucked away within the Bradbury building. Fortunately, Pris does not appear to be present, so it’s unlikely you’ll be attacked; however, it’s also worth taking a look at the floor above for another reminder of the film. I’m honestly not sure if either of these were present in prior builds, but I enjoyed discovering them both.
Blade Runner Future Noir, March 2023
When visiting, do be sure to view the region under the region’s EEP settings – the add immeasurably to the experience and help give the region a greater sense of depth than the 256 metres on the side otherwise presents. You can still also partake of a bowl of noodles at The White Dragon, which has also bee expanded upon with the inclusion of Animesh NPCs.
Should you enjoy a visit and appreciate Hera’s work, do please consider making a donation via the landing point’s bear; all L$ received go directly back into the region’s upkeep and tier – and at Hera points out, the greater the assistance, the longer Blade Runner Future Noir will remain available for everyone to enjoy.
On Friday, March 10th, 2023, Linden Lab streamed a special session of Lab Gab featuring the Office of Second Life: Grumpity Linden, Mojo Linden and Patch Linden.
The session was built around announcements and updates relating to various initiatives and product developments. Note that the following is not a direct transcript of the entire session, but is intended to record the key points discussed.
For ease of reference, timestamps are provided to the relative points within the video where specific topics are discussed, allowing readers who prefer to listen to the comment directly to be able to do so.
Grumpity Linden: heads up Second Life Product team, where she has overseen a shift to growth, a stronger, more balanced economy, movement towards better community cohesion, and an overall forward-looking approach. She originally started at LL whilst working for The Product Engine, and was involved in the development of Viewer 2 (as designed by 80/20 Studio), prior to joining LL full-time in 2014. As the Vice President of Product, she is responsible for coordinating the various teams involved in bringing features and updates to Second Life, liaising with legal, financial and compliance to ensure features and capabilities meet any specific requirements in those areas, and so on; work which can involve looking at specifics within various elements of the overall SL product, such as UI design and layout, etc.
Mojo Linden: joined the Lab in 2021 at the Vice President of Engineering, filling the shoes worn for so long by Oz Linden. A 20-year veteran of the gaming industry, he has been responsible for launching numerous games across multiple genres and platforms, and has a strong understanding of platforms, architectures, and product development and technical capabilities. In his role at the Lab, he has shown enormous openness and candour in seeking to increase the platform’s functionality and performance, and in pushing to expand SL’s capabilities.
Patch Linden: originally a Second Life resident and business owner who joined the platform in 2004, and became a Linden in September 2007. He worked across a number of teams within the company – notably within the support and product spheres, and is responsible for developing the Land Operations team, and more recently setting-up the company’s support office in Atlanta, Georgia. Since 2019, he has been Vice President, Product Operations.
Grumpity Linden holds up a mobile ‘phone showing Second Life running on it using the upcoming SL Mobile capability
Built upon Unity.
Core development of this product began in October 2022, with the aim of gaining as high a fidelity of experience on mobile as is possible.
Works on all platforms – Android, iOS, tablets, ‘phones.
The product is still very much in development, with the focus having been on graphics fidelity, including full avatar rendering.
There is some way to go before the product is ready for release – work at the moment is on smoothing out some of the rendering edge cases before moving on to adding further functionality.
Initial release is planned for late 2023 with limited functionality, which will then be iterated upon to add more and more functionality and capabilities.
Grumpity re-iterated the drive (initiated by the late Ebbe Altberg, not long after he joined LL as CEO in 2014) to lower the cost of virtual land in SL – as had long been called for by SL residents – whilst also offsetting the lower land tiers through increases in fees elsewhere within the platform.
The fee increases – as noted in the official blog post – also relate to increased costs LL has faced, thanks to the general economic situation.
The fact that the option for paying for land using L$ (restricted to Premium Plus subscribers and limited to one region only at the time of writing) is higher than the USD fee for the same is explained as being a combination of the facts that the L$ to USD exchange rate, the fact that LL have to do the lifting of conversion from L$ to LSD through the LindeX, and as such must participate in the SL economy.
It was also noted that paying in L$ means subscribers avoid being charged VAT / state sales tax / similar.
Whilst the BonnieBot website has take steps away from publishing information which might be regarded as being within Second Life under the expectation it is private (a point that Linden Lab seemingly missed in their initial responses to forum thread postings), the Lab has recognised the need for clearer / better policies and has promised to provide them.
These new policies have gone through the necessary compliance and legal reviews within Linden Lab, and will hopefully be published in week #11 (commencing Monday, March 13th, 2023).
In addition, a new set of estate / region controls are being developed to enable estate / region holders to better control the use of Scripted Agents within their land. These will be deployed “soon” – hopefully within weeks of this session being aired.
In brief: PBR essentially models the flow of light within computer graphics in a manner which mimics light reflections on surfaces in the physical world.
It represents a significant technical step forward in graphical rendering for SL (in the order of 10 years).
The core of this work is to support a new approach to material maps / surfaces either directly on products development for SL by content creators or which can be used on suitable objects within Second Life, which give they sense of physical world lighting and reflection.
In particular, it draws on the Khronos glTF 2.0 specification, and allows creators to more readily use a range of tools supporting that standard (including Blender) and also contents libraries, etc., in support of their work.
An Intel-developed scene imported by Nagachief Darkstone and WindowsCE to demonstrate reflection probes (note the reflections on the knight’s armour – these are not generated by attached environment lights but by a reflection probe within the building structure. Image courtesy of Rye Cogtail
Also included in the PBR work is reflection probes – which in simple terms enable light sources to generate reflections of an in-world scene on suitable surfaces (i.e. those using the materials system).
None of this work does not necessarily mean users need higher specification computers in order to view it; however, reflection probes can impact system performance, so the viewer will include an option to enable / disable these if they prove to be a performance hit for people.
Demos of the PBR work, including an imported Sponza scene, can be found on the following regions on Aditi (the Beta grid): Materials1; Materials Adult and Rumpus Room 1 through 4.
The PBR viewer itself – required to see the content on Aditi, is (at the time of writing) still in the Project Viewer stage (so not ready for use as a primary viewer!) and is available through the Alternate Viewers page.
The next stage of the project is to provide support on Agni (the main grid) and promote the viewer to Release Candidate status, both for more widespread testing, but there is no set time frame for this to happen.
This work does not mean LL are investing in a new graphics engine – this work, and the recent performance improvements work has been on updating and enhancing the existing graphics engine to better support users and what might be regarded as recognised graphics standards.
VR still requires a consistent 60 fps left eye / right eye), and for many; the feeling at LL is that SL is not there yet even with all the recent performance improvements.
Various initiatives – adoption of Vulkan, the Puppetry Project – should help improve things further, and LL might reconsider VR headset support in 2024.
This was a large update (lifting the search engine from version 2.3 to 8.4, and did involve some issues on deployment, which are being addressed – see: Updates to Marketplace Search.
Further fixes and improvements to the update will be deployed in due course, the first of which will be Boolean searches.
A fix for Featured Lists not updating correctly is also due to be deployed “soon”.
The avatars are now regarded as completed, and work is currently focused on developing clothing and accessories for them.
A preview version of the new, single mesh (head-to-toe) avatar, which will use by mesh clothing and Bakes on Mesh, and be open for creators to design clothing and accessories
That said, the project has taken longer to develop than had been anticipated.
There will be a dev kit for creators wishing to support the NUX Avatars. This will be launched ahead of the release of the new avatars.
The entire system is intended to be “PBR ready” in that PBR materials may not be included in the clothing and accessories released by the Lab, but the items will be capable of supporting the use of PBR materials on them.
Everyone is pretty much having fun with the SL Mobile project, and hopes were expressed that a “blooper” reel could be made available. It was also indicated that news on the theme for the 20th Second Life Anniversary event (SL20B) will be made available in due course.
Puppetry demonstration via Linden Lab – see below. Demos video with the LL comment “We have some basic things working with a webcam and Second Life but there’s more to do before it’s as animated as we want.”
The following notes have been taken from chat logs and audio recording of the Thursday, March 9th, 2023 Puppetry Project meetings held at the Castelet Puppetry Theatre on Aditi. These meetings are generally held on alternate weeks to the Content Creation User Group (CCUG), on same day / time (Thursdays at 13:00 SLT).
Notes in these summaries are not intended to be a full transcript of every meeting, but to highlight project progress / major topics of discussion.
Project Summary
General Project Description as Originally Conceived
LL’s renewed interest in puppetry was primarily instigated by Philip joining LL as official advisor, and so it really was about streaming mocap. That is what Philip was interested in and why we started looking at it again. However since Puppetry’s announcement what I’ve been hearing from many SL Residents is: what they really want from “puppetry” is more physicality of the avatar in-world: picking up objects, holding hands, higher fidelity collisions.
As a result, that is what I’ve been contemplating: how to improve the control and physicality of the the avatar. Can that be the new improved direction of the Puppetry project? How to do it?
Leviathan Linden
Previously referred to as “avatar expressiveness”, Puppetry is intended to provide a means by which avatars can mimic physical world actions by their owners (e.g. head, hand, arm movements) through tools such as a webcam and using technologies like inverse kinematics (IK) and the LLSD Event API Plug-in (LEAP) system.
Note that facial expressions and finger movements are not currently enabled.
Most movement is in the 2D plain (e.g., hand movements from side-to-side but not forward / back), due to limitations with things like depth of field tracking through a webcam, which has yet to be addressed.
The back-end support for the capability is only available on Aditi (the Beta grid) and within the following regions: Bunraku, Marionette, and Castelet.
Puppetry requires the use of a dedicated viewer, the Project Puppetry viewer, available through the official Second Life Alternate Viewers page.
No other special needs beyond the project viewer are required to “see” Puppetry animations. However, to use the capability to animate your own avatar and broadcast the results, requires additional work – refer to the links below.
There is a Puppetry Discord channel – those wishing to join it should contact members of LL’s puppetry team, e.g. Aura Linden, Simon Linden, Rider Linden, Leviathan Linden (not a full list of names at this time – my apologies to those involved whom I have missed).
Additional Work Not Originally In-Scope
Direct avatar / object / avatar-avatar interactions (“picking up” an apple; high-fives. etc.
Animations streaming: allowing one viewer to run animations and have them sent via the simulator to all receiving viewers without any further processing of the animations by those viewers.
Enhanced LSL integration for animation control.
Adoption of better animation standards – possibly glTF.
Given the project is incorporating a lot of additional ideas, it is likely to evolve into a rolling development, with immediate targets for development / implementation decided as they are agreed upon, to be followed by future enhancements. As such, much of what goes into the meetings at present is general discussion and recommendations for consideration, rather than confirmed lines o development.
Bugs, Feature Requests and Code Submissions
For those experimenting with Puppetry, Jiras (bug reports / fixes or feature requests) should be filed with “[Puppetry]” at the start of the Jira title.
An updated version of the project viewer is due to be made available once it has cleared LL’s QA process. This includes:
Using the binary protocol for the LEAP module communication, with new logic which causes LEAP modules to one be loaded by the viewer when they are used.
The AgentIO LEAP module adds the ability to adjust the look at target, viewer camera and agent orientation.
Support for sending the joint position of your avatar to the server, which is then available in LSL.
The code reports the post animation location for attachment points, allowing the the sever to know where things like hands and wings, etc., are, and this in turn allows LSL to query where that attachment point is in space and how it is rotated.
HOWEVER, the animation streaming code (see previous Puppetry meeting notes) will not be in the next viewer update.
Server-Side Work
The simulator code now has llGetAttachmentPointAnim() support, which should be recognised by the upcoming viewer update.
The Aditi puppetry regions are to be merged with the updated code so this can be tested.
While there has been some work completed on animation imports since the last meeting, there was nothing significant for LL to report on progress at this meeting.
General Notes
There is additional work going on to try to improve the IK system, with the aim of having the basics working better than is currently the case – better stability, etc. This work may appear in the viewer update after the one currently being prepared to go public.
Performance:
To prevent puppetry generating too much messaging traffic (UDP) between the viewer and simulator, a throttle is being worked on so that when the simulator is under a heavy load from multiple viewers running puppetry code, it can tell them all to tone down the volume of messages.
There will also be some switches and logic put into place that can be used when needed, helping to protect regions in case the load gets overwhelming.
A further suggestion made is to ensure the simulator does not broadcast puppetry messages for avatars seated and not using the code (such as an audience at a performance) to further reduce to volume of messaging, this is viewed as a potentially good avenue of work to consider.
There is also a threshold in place – if an attachment point does not move beyond it, it is not considered as moved, which will hopefully also reduce the amount of messaging the simulator has to handle.
LSL Integration:
See: OPEN-375: “LSL Functions for reading avatar animation positions”.
This work is now paused. Rider Linden developed a proof of concept, but found that in order to better manipulate parameters within the constraints, a configuration file should be used. He is therefore refactoring the code to do this before proceeding further.
The configuration file will be called avatar_constraints.llsd and it will live alongside avatar_lad.xml in the character directory.
Questions were again raised on whether Puppetry is for VR / will enable the viewer to run VR.
It was again pointed out that while Puppetry lays more foundational work which could be leveraged for use with VR headsets, than is not the aim of the Puppetry project.
Providing VR headset support is a much broader issue, which would require the involvement of other teams from LL – Product, the Graphics Team, the viewer developers, etc.
Onceagain Art Gallery: Celestial Demon – Les Fleurs du Mal
Les Fleurs du mal, an exhibition of images by Celestial Demon being hosted on a sky platform at Onceagain Gallery by onceagain (Manoji Yachvili), is an interesting installation in that its title appears to be juxtaposed with its intention to venerate, something which immediately piques the curiosity.
Across the platform, which is dressed as a garden – or perhaps a meadow in which is centred a small, modern building apparently built within the ruins of a slightly larger, older, house – there sits a total of six small display areas, each home two images of women presented with floral surrounds which may have been part of the original set used to create each of the images or added during post-processing – although which might be the case isn’t actually important.
Onceagain Art Gallery: Celestial Demon – Les Fleurs du Mal
Reached by selecting Les Fleurs after clicking the teleport disk at the entrance to the ground-level of the Onceagain gallery spaces, the building-within-a-building of the garden platform acts as a central introduction and hub for exploring the six pairs of images, On the wall, in both English and Italian, can be found the dedication for the installation, which reads:
This moment of my life is dedicated to the marvellous creature called woman. To her who despite the storms and demeaning periods, she always manages to flourish. To her who blossoms into a smile despite the incessant rain of the darkest night. May the earth beneath her feet be always soft. For her, Les Fleurs du mal.
It’s a charming and disarming dedication, encapsulating the central theme of reverence for women; however, it cannot be denied that the idea of presented women who have so captivated with les fleurs du mal jars a little; or perhaps the expression is used in reference to those self-same storms and rains of dark night the subjects of these images have overcome. I’ll eave that for you to juggle with when visiting.
Onceagain Art Gallery: Celestial Demon – Les Fleurs du Mal
What I will say is that is little doubting the expression of reverence and the desire to off a visual dedication to the women – to all women, perhaps – presented through these pieces, each of which is available for purchase on a limited number basis.
Through graceful posing, a degree of soft focus through depth of field, and the employ of a plain white background and in some either the softest touch of a primary tint to match the floral arrays and or a gentle suggestion of shadow, the 12 presented pieces are eloquent and captivating in their depth of beauty and narrative. Each image is attended by more words – again in Italian and English – as an expression of the character and nature of the individual featured in each piece.
Onceagain Art Gallery: Celestial Demon – Les Fleurs du Mal
Poetic, graceful and set within a location in keeping with the ideas of reverence and dedication, a garden one can wander in silence and come upon each pair of images and their words free from the distractions of surrounding pieces, complete with places where one can sit and contemplate, Les Fleurs is an idyllic exhibition of art from a gifted teller of visual tales.
SLurl Details
Remember to use the teleport disk to reach the exhibition platform.
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 